Adam and Evolution

Like many religious people, back when I was a Christian, I still believed in evolution. I somehow resolved the falsehoods I knew to be in the story of creation with the facts I had learned in science about the origins of the species. Like so many other Christians I had chosen to view the story of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for something. I just wasn’t sure for what. With so much overwhelming evidence in support of this theory, I was an adult before I realized that there were still people that doubted evolution. There were people who actually believed in the Garden of Eden. I was shocked when I discovered that there were still people who believed that God created man out of dirt and woman from Adam’s rib. I had assumed that this debate had been decided long ago and there was nothing left to argue. Apparently I was wrong.

Creationists have now loaded their clips with a couple new bullets or should I say, the same bullets made from newer alloys with catchier names. One of these newer bullets that modern day creationists have sought to aim at the heart of evolutionary theory is the idea that there is a lack of transitional species, animals in transition from one species to another (i.e. reptiles to birds) and that this perceived absence disproves or at least casts doubt on the theory of evolution. I watched a debate on TV where the actor turned evangelist, Kirk Cameron of “The Way of The Master” debated the founding members of The Rational Response squad. Kirk proceeded to attack evolution with the “absence of transitional species” argument, holding up a picture of what he called a “Croc-a-duck” to great comedic affect. As absurd as it sounded, it gave the Rational Responders pause. They stumbled. I was surprised. This was an absurd argument.

Any first grader who has read a dinosaur book knows that there are indeed transitional species. The most famous of these is the “lobe-finned” fish, Tiktaalik, which is ancestral to all Tetrapods, all animals with four limbs. That’s the fish that is the intermediary between fish and amphibians that you see crawling out of the water in the beginning of every grade school picture book on dinosaurs. I first became acquainted with this fish in first grade when I read my very first book which just happened to be about dinosaurs.

Tiktaalik lived about 375 million years ago, and had characteristics of both fish and amphibians. It had the scales and gills of a fish, and stubby limbs that were intermediate between fish and Tetrapods. It also had lungs for breathing air in addition to its gills.

Transitioning between reptiles and birds, archeologists have found a number of fossils, most notably Archaeopteryx which lived about 150 million years ago. Archaeopteryx had characteristics of both reptiles and birds. It had a similar bone structure to a reptile including a long bony tail. It had feathered, fully-formed, wings like birds though It’s unknown whether Archaeopteryx was actually able to fly the same way that modern birds do. It may have only been able to glide or hop.
Ambulocetus was an amphibious mammal similar to modern whales, which themselves could be considered transitional species between mammals and amphibians or perhaps even mammals and fish. Ambulocetus lived about 50 million years ago and had characteristics of cloven-hoofed mammals from the Artiodactyla family.

So, obviously, the claim that there are no transitional species is pure bullshit. It works on the faithful because they accept it, like every other claim made by their religious leaders, on faith, without evidence and despite all evidence to the contrary. They don’t check the facts and they ignore the obvious facts around them. Evolution has the credibility that Creationism lacks because you can perform experiments with predictable results based on Evolution. You can’t do that with Creationism. Evolution has predictive power. If evolution is true we should have found fossils of animals going back millions of years in increasingly primitive forms. We have. We find new fossils every year that plug more holes in the fossil record. There is also a very clear way to falsify the theory. For instance, if we were to find human fossils in the pre-Cambrian fossil layer. That would completely explode the Theory of Evolution. But that hasn’t happened. Everything we have found, an overwhelming preponderance of evidence visible in museums in cities all over the US and in many countries around the world, supports the theory and nothing so far contradicts it. That makes continuing to believe in the unfounded hypothesis of creation… well… stupid.

Another upgraded, modernized, repacked bullet the creationist has aimed at evolutionary theory is that of Irreducible Complexity. This is the argument that there are some physical features in the animal kingdom that are necessarily complex and therefore cannot be reduced into anything less complex without becoming dysfunctional thereby proving that it must have always been as it is and therefore could not have evolved. This is another form of William Paley’s Watchmaker Argument.

First published in 1802, William Paley’s Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, introduces one of the most famous analogies in the history of creationism, that of the watch.

“ . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use.”

Paley argued that living organisms are even more complicated than watches, "in a degree which exceeds all computation." And therefore must likewise have had a maker, an intelligent designer.

You see in this argument, the self same assumptions and unfounded claims as in its modern descendent, Irreducible Complexity. This new version is merely Paley’s Watchmaker Argument by another name. But let’s deal with this.

One of the common examples given by proponents of irreducible complexity are those of a bird’s wing or of the human eye. The argument goes that a wing cannot be reduced into anything simpler and still permit flight nor could an eye be reduced to anything simpler and still permit sight. Half a wing would be useless as would half an eye. A sightless eye or a flightless wing would give you no biological advantage that would cause those animals with half a wing or half an eye to survive and reproduce more successfully than those without and so these physical attributes would not have survived the natural selection process that evolutionary theorists propose in order to evolve into the eyes and wings we see today and therefore they must not have evolved but must have come into existence as they are. They must have therefore had an intelligent designer who saw the benefits of wings and eyes and so this designer lovingly equipped his creations with these features to help them to better survive and flourish.

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? The problem is that there are less complex wings and eyes in nature. Obviously, neither William Paley nor the proponents of Irreducible Complexity have ever heard of flying geckos or flying squirrels. They all possess simple, less complex “wings,” some that are little more than flaps of skin with which they glide from tree branch to tree branch allowing them to capture insects and avoid predators, a definite biological advantage over earthbound creatures. Flatworms have less complex eyes than humans. Their eyes see only shadows and vague silhouettes. Just enough to allow them to maneuver around obstacles. It is easy to see how these simple “eyes,” which have a mere fraction of the capabilities of the human eye, gave them advantages over creatures that were completely sightless. Hawks and eagles have more sophisticated eyes than humans. In comparison, we are working with only half an eye and we haven’t done so bad with our weak little primitive eyes that capture so little of the visual spectrum. I haven’t been hit by a bus yet and I can pick out the silicone from the natural breasts at the local strip club. So goes the Irreducible Complexity argument.